Taking in Water at Parkside, from Bury's Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 1831 - artfinder 267572

The original station at Parkside on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, about half way between Liverpool and Manchester, where trains stopped to take on coke and water. It was here that the leading Liverpool M.P. and promoter of the railway William Huskisson was fatally injured on the railway's opening day in September 1830. With other passengers Huskisson had alighted from the train and was talking to the Prime Minister through the window of his special carriage when the Rocket began bearing down on the party on the other track. Huskisson tried to clamber into the Prime Minister's carriage, but the door that he was trying to pull himself up by swung open and was struck by the oncoming locomotive. Huskisson fell, and his leg was crushed by the engine. He died later that day.Parkside station was replaced in 1839 by a new station 350m to the east (which itself closed in 1878). But its site is recorded by a memorial to Huskisson by the side of the line with a marble plaque, close to the site of the accident.